Ready to do the most impactful work of your career? At Coinbase, we are uncompromising on our mission to increase economic freedom. The bar is high, the environment is intense, and we like it that way. This isn't a place for complacency, it’s a place to be pushed past your perceived limits. If you're ready to build the future of finance alongside people who refuse to settle for "good enough," you belong here. Coinbase is a remote-first, but not remote-only company. Expect to get together quarterly for intense in-person working sessions called “surges.” learn more about working at Coinbase.
As a Senior Software Engineer on the Data Layer team within the Platform group, you'll shape the API (GraphQL) platform that connects every client application to Coinbase's backend services, handling the majority of user traffic across Consumer, Base, and Institutional products. You'll own the critical systems that route and serve API requests at scale, improving reliability, performance, and developer experience for hundreds of engineers building on this foundation layer.
What you'll do:
- Own and deliver projects end to end, from scoping and system design through implementation, rollout, and production validation, driving measurable progress on the team's highest-priority initiatives.
- Design and build high-reliability, low-latency systems serving millions of users, tackling challenges like caching, upstream service optimization, and efficient connection management at scale.
- Build and improve the API framework and tooling that hundreds of engineers depend on, making it fast and easy for teams across the company to build, test, and ship independently.
- Drive operational excellence across T0 services: own SLOs, improve observability, lead incident response, and reduce operational toil so the team can invest in high-leverage work.
- Partner cross-functionally with product engineering teams to design API schemas, support service launches, and ensure the platform evolves to meet their needs.
- Set the technical bar through code and design reviews, mentor engineers across the team, and contribute to architectural direction.
Required Skills and Experience:
- 5+ years of professional engineering experience with demonstrated ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems.
- Deep proficiency in backend languages (Go, Java, or similar) with hands-on experience designing microservices, API platforms, and high-availability systems.
- Track record of delivering projects end to end, including scoping, architecture, implementation, monitoring, and iteration, in environments where reliability and performance are non-negotiable.
- Experience decomposing complex systems into clean APIs and abstractions adopted by multiple consuming teams, with comfort owning on-call responsibilities and driving incident response across multi-service architectures.
- Demonstrated ability to align technical decisions with cross-functional stakeholders, translating platform capabilities into actionable plans with frontend engineers, product teams, and platform consumers.
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs and drive measurable improvements in workflow efficiency, cost, and quality.
Pay Transparency Notice: Base salary varies by location (see range below). Total compensation may also include equity and bonus eligibility, and benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k)).
- Application Limit: Candidates may submit a maximum of 3 applications within a 6-month period.
- Equal Opportunity Employer: Coinbase is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or genetic information. Applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
- US Applicants: View Employee Rights, Know Your Rights, and E-Verify Notice of Participation.
- Accommodations: If you are an individual with a disability who needs a reasonable accommodation, email us your request and contact info at accommodations[at]coinbase.com. Need screen reading technology? Click here to download a free compatible screen reader and view the tutorial.
- Data Privacy & Arbitration: By submitting your application, you agree to our Candidate Privacy Notice. US applicants: By submitting your application, you agree to Arbitration of Disputes.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of professional engineering experience with ownership of complex, production-grade distributed systems
- Deep proficiency in backend languages (Go, Java, or similar) with hands-on experience designing microservices and API platforms
- Proven track record delivering projects end-to-end including scoping, architecture, implementation, monitoring, and iteration
- Experience designing high-reliability, low-latency systems and solving caching, connection management, and upstream optimization challenges
- Experience decomposing complex systems into clean APIs/abstractions and supporting multiple consuming teams; comfortable owning on-call and incident response
- Ability to align technical decisions with cross-functional stakeholders and translate platform capabilities into actionable plans
- Utilizes generative AI responsibly, maintaining human oversight to deliver business-ready outputs
What the Team is Saying
_0.png)
_0.png)
Coinbase Compensation & Benefits Highlights
How does Coinbase ensure its pay and bonus plans are competitive?
Coinbase uses a market-driven, pay-for-performance approach to keep pay and bonus plans competitive. Coinbase regularly benchmarks roles against leading technology and fintech companies using external market data and reviews its compensation programs on a recurring basis to ensure salary, bonus, and equity remain aligned with the broader market and business goals. Annual bonus and equity programs are tied to both company results and individual impact, so when Coinbase and its people perform, total rewards reflect that performance.
Coinbase Insights
What We Do
Crypto creates economic freedom by ensuring that people can participate fairly in the economy, and Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is on a mission to increase economic freedom for more than 1 billion people. We’re updating the century-old financial system by providing a trusted platform that makes it easy for people and institutions to engage with crypto assets, including trading, staking, safekeeping, spending, and fast, free global transfers. We also provide critical infrastructure for onchain activity and support builders who share our vision that onchain is the new online. And together with the crypto community, we advocate for responsible rules to make the benefits of crypto available around the world.
Why Work With Us
We have the opportunity to accelerate the pace of innovation in the world by building an open financial system. Our vision is to create more economic freedom in the world, to help people control their own wealth, start companies, have financial privacy, and participate in the global economy. And to get us there, we focus, build and move as a team.
Gallery
Coinbase Teams
Coinbase Offices
Remote Workspace
Employees work remotely.
Coinbase is remote-first, which enables us to innovate, build and move quickly. Our teams are able to work effectively from around the globe with time for in-person offsites and team meetups to enhance collaboration and connection.
.png)
